Sex-positive parenting begins before your child starts talking. In No Shame: Real Talk With Your Kids About Sex, Self-Confidence, and Healthy Relationships, New York City Psychiatrist Dr. Lea Lis offers a guide to parents as they seek to help their children through the maze of sexuality and intimate relationships in the 21st century. In clear, straightforward terms, she lays out the groundwork on which parents can help their kids grow up to enjoy positive sexual experiences, and backs up her arguments with data from the most recent surveys and studies of teen sexual behavior.

Dr. Lis’ unique Mindful Kid practice in New York is well recognized as an approach that emphasizes the mental healthcare of the child, exploring underlying issues to truly help children and their families move through and beyond their concerns to a place of healing and connection.

In No Shame, Dr. Lis covers the many issues that may arise as children grow: how to help young children understand personal physical boundaries; the importance of opposite-sex role models in children’s lives, what to tell—and not tell—your kids about your own sexual history; and the role of rituals to mark a girl’s first period or a boy’s passage into manhood. Dr. Lis gives practical pointers on how to help your kids when their relationships run into trouble, how to encourage them to have good relationships with themselves, and how to teach them to flirt and to deal with rejection.

No Shame shows how talking to your kids about sex and encouraging them to keep a dialogue open with you will help them to have positive, joy-filled emotional and sexual relationships as they grow up. This may not always be comfortable, but as Dr. Lis shows throughout this book, talking about sex, love and relationships in a knowledgeable way is essential.